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Chapter 26 - The Mourning Sisters

Airam, Hermione, and Esther waited silently as Ulrich stood at the doorway.

Esther, who was seated at the closest desk, was the first to grow nervous. She slowly stood up and began backing away, retreating toward Hermione's desk.

In the end, Hermione was the one who spoke.

"Do you need something?"

She had started with an annoyed tone, but quickly softened it, remembering all too well how that same tone had earned her a crimson prison before.

"Something. Get up," Ulrich said simply before turning and walking away, clearly expecting them to follow.

The three girls exchanged wary glances, but in the end, they chose to obey and follow after him.

Airam went first, Hermione after her, and Esther stayed close behind.

"I am suspicious about this, Airam. Be ready for anything," Hermione whispered.

Airam gave a slight nod.

"The Count said he will not harm us, big sister…" Esther reminded them timidly.

"You are too gullible, Esther," Hermione said with a shake of her head. "The only ones you can trust are us, your sisters. We trust only ourselves, do you understand?"

Esther pouted faintly at that.

"What about Linnea and Monika? Fabian too… they have been kind to us…" She said quietly.

"All three are on Ulrich's evil side, don't you understand? They are here to corrupt you under Ulrich's demonic plans!" Hermione snapped.

"Eh?" Esther stared at her in confusion. "D—Demons?"

"Hm. I am sure he is involved with demons. Just look at him. Everyone around him is afraid," Hermione said with a nod, as though that settled the matter entirely.

Ulrich continued walking ahead of them with a perfectly straight face.

Without even realizing it, Hermione had blurted out the truth about him being involved with demons.

Hopefully, it would remain nothing more than a theory in her mind until the very end.

Just like that, Ulrich led them out of the estate and toward the back grounds.

As they walked farther and farther away from the manor, Airam and Hermione began to grow increasingly suspicious. He was taking them beyond the estate yard itself now, along a path they had never used before, one that was isolated and strangely deserted.

Trees lined both sides of the path, their branches hanging low and loose like skeletal arms. The further they went, the more the world seemed to lose its warmth and color compared to the grand estate behind them.

Esther, now visibly frightened, clutched Hermione's arm tightly as she looked around.

Airam, however, kept walking ahead, tense and alert, just like the eldest sister who was ready to protect her two younger siblings at any moment, just in case Ulrich had suddenly changed his mind and intended to bury them somewhere far from everyone's sight.

Then, after two long minutes of walking, the path finally opened.

Esther gasped when she saw what lay before them.

A graveyard.

"Eeeek!" She shrieked, immediately darting behind Hermione.

"You liar!!" Hermione shouted, glaring accusingly at Ulrich.

At the same time, Airam drew the knife she had hidden beneath her sleeve and fixed him with a dark glare.

Ulrich turned around and looked at the three sisters with a deadpan expression.

It had only been a week since his return, and he was already exhausted from dealing with all three of them.

At this point, he wondered whether even a hundred years spent with them would be enough to make them trust him even a little.

Ignoring their reactions entirely, he turned back around and continued walking.

For a brief moment, the three girls stood there in confusion. But eventually, Airam chose to keep following him, with Hermione moving carefully beside her and Esther hurrying close behind.

It was only then that they realized he was not actually entering the graveyard itself.

The graveyard was large, far larger than they had first thought and it belonged to the Rubenhart family, serving as their burial ground for generations upon generations.

But he wasn't heading inside the protected iron gates of the cemetery. Instead, he continued ahead, pressing further down the overgrown path even where it clearly seemed to end.

He had to push his way through the low-hanging branches, sweeping the thick canopy of leaves aside with his arms to forge a path forward. Being small, Airam, Hermione, and Esther easily managed to slip through the newly opened gaps behind him.

Eventually, Ulrich paused, his gaze fixed on something ahead, before stepping out of the thicket.

The three sisters widened their eyes as they emerged into a hidden, open clearing of lush green grass. At its very center stood a beautiful tree blooming with vibrant rose flowers, it was young, yet already quite tall and striking.

It was a truly beautiful sight, but the sisters' gazes did not linger on the blossoms. Their eyes were locked on the glass coffin resting gently beneath the branches. Beside it, a perfectly rectangular grave had already been dug into the earth.

"Mommy!" Esther shrieked, her voice shattering the silence as she broke into a run, tears already streaming down her face.

Looking dumbfounded, Airam and Hermione rushed forward right after her, their eyes wide as they stared down into the glass box.

It was truly her. 

Their mother, Anna-Maria.

She was wearing a white simple gown.

Hermione soon broke down as well, pressing her trembling hands against the cold glass. Her and Esther's teardrops fell heavily onto the transparent surface, blurring the peaceful, sleeping figure of their mother resting within.

Airam shot a stunned glance back at Ulrich. She tried her best to maintain her composure, but her dark eyes trembled, betraying a rare, agonizing flicker of emotion.

Back on that dreadful day, they had been forcefully torn away from their mother's side, or rather, Ulrich had been the one to pull them away. Though they had cried and raged against him, none of the sisters could truly fight back. Anna-Maria was a witch, and the Crown Prince had been standing right there. At the time, they believed Ulrich was simply dragging them as far away from the Prince as quickly as possible to lock them up in his estate. That assumption was partially correct, though saving them from the Prince wasn't his sole motivation.

Regardless, they had spent the last week believing their mother's body had been callously burned to ash along with the rest of their ruined village. But it seemed they were wrong.

Amidst the chaos, Ulrich had secretly managed to recover Anna-Maria's body, using powerful preservation magic to keep her perfectly intact for this exact occasion. It was happening a bit later than he had originally planned, but having known the warmth of a loving mother himself, Ulrich wanted to at least offer the three orphans this brief sanctuary so they could properly say their goodbyes.

Ulrich stared at the grieving girls for a brief moment before turning away, walking a respectable distance off to give them the privacy they needed to mourn.

Offering their mother a dignified resting place was indeed a rare, good-natured deed on Ulrich's part. However, his mind was already working on a secondary objective.

'Now they will think twice before ever trying to leave,' he thought to himself.

Harboring that manipulative thought to ensure these three future powerful witches remained tied to his side, Ulrich simply stood in the shadows and kept his silent watch.

Over an hour passed before the weeping finally began to subside.

Shifting his gaze back to the clearing, Ulrich noticed that Esther had completely exhausted herself, falling unconscious right on top of the glass coffin. Hermione was slumped on her knees right beside her, drained.

Airam, on the other hand, was standing perfectly still on the opposite side of the grave, staring down at her mother's face. She hadn't wailed loudly like Esther or openly wept like Hermione, but she had indeed cried. Faint, silent tear tracks had already dried against her pale cheeks.

Seeing that their strength was spent, Ulrich slowly walked back toward the grave.

"That should be enough," he said as he approached. "You may visit her grave whenever you want."

"Y—You will bury her here? What will become of her body?" Hermione asked, scrambling up from the grass.

"The preservation spell has been removed,"he said.

There was no need to elaborate further.

"N—No, I want to see her again!" Hermione said.

Ulrich gave her a cold stare.

"She is dead," he reminded her bluntly.

"But—!"

"Hermione."

Airam's quiet voice cut through the air.

Hermione quickly looked over at Airam, who was just giving her a stare. Hermione tightly clenched her fists and bit her lip hard to stop her trembling. Reluctantly, she gathered the sleeping Esther into her arms and began to walk away from the grave.

With the younger girls retreating, Ulrich slowly raised his hand. The glass coffin lifted itself seamlessly from the earth, hovering briefly in the air before lowering perfectly into the freshly dug trench. 

With another slight motion of his hand, the pile of displaced soil beside the grave swept backward, filling the rectangular hole flawlessly beneath the roots of the blooming tree. Ulrich left a slight mound in the earth, a permanent marker of where she now rested.

Airam stared down at the ground for a long moment before raising her gaze to the tree towering above it. 

She had no idea such a tree even existed. It was clearly the product of artificial nurturing, yet it was alive, a sprawling rose tree bursting with blossoms of every conceivable color. It was truly beautiful.

Breaking her stillness, she began moving around the base of the trunk, jumping up repeatedly to pluck individual roses of different shades from the lower branches.

Ulrich observed her movements in silence. He didn't mind merely watching her gather the blooms, until she suddenly grabbed a sturdy branch and began hastily climbing the tree to reach a vibrant purple rose near the top.

He had seen enough.

Reaching out his palm toward the trunk, he sent a concentrated, invisible shockwave rippling through the air. The blunt force hit the tree bark with a dull thud.

Instantly, a shower of vivid petals and whole roses rained down from the canopy, scattering blossoms of every color across the green grass.

Airam dropped lightly back down to the earth, immediately shooting a sharp glance at Ulrich while clutching a small bouquet of roses tightly in her hand.

Recovering quickly, she moved around the grass, carefully picking out the remaining flowers she wanted from the fallen pile. With careful motions then, she began arranging the colorful blooms directly over her mother's fresh grave.

When she was finally satisfied with the tribute, she knelt in front of the mound of earth, bowing her head in silence for a long moment before abruptly standing up.

She shot one last glance at Ulrich. But the second she met his gaze, she broke into a sudden run, sprinting past him toward the estate. As she moved, the stolen kitchen knife strapped beneath her sleeve slipped loose, clattering loudly against the path.

She skidded to a halt and turned back to retrieve it, but stopped dead as she looked up. Ulrich was standing right there, giving her the exact same deadpan, exhausting stare he always did.

She glared at him for one final second before whirling around and sprinting away, abandoning the weapon in the dirt.

There were plenty of spare knives waiting in the estate's kitchens, anyway.

Ulrich walked over and bent down to pick up the discarded blade. Straightening up, he cast a long glance back at the flower-covered grave.

He had just buried the body of one of the most powerful witches in existence in plain sight, right in his family's backyard. Even though Anna-Maria had lost most of her magical strength and grown weak before her death, her remains were still precious and highly sought after by those who knew her true identity.

Only time would tell if making this gesture had been a terrible mistake.

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